Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/42

down there was a beautiful piece of nature's workmanship, and the whiteness and shape of her thighs surprised him.

Then he pressed Hamdonna in a passionate embrace, and soon saw the animation leave her face; she seemed to be almost unconscious. She had lost her head; and holding Bahloul's member in her hands excited and fired him more and more.

Bahloul said to her: "Why do I see you so troubled and beside yourself?" And she answered: "Leave me, O son of the debauched woman! By God, I am like a mare in heat, and you continue to excite me still more with your words, and what words! They would set any woman on fire, if she was the purest creature in the world. You will insist in making me succumb by your talk and your verses."

Bahloul answered: "Am I then not like your husband?" "Yes," she said, "but a woman gets in heat on account of the man, as a mare on account of the horse, whether the man be the husband or not; with this difference, however, that the mare gets lusty only at certain periods of the year, and only then receives the stallion, while a woman can always be made rampant by words of love.[1] Both these dispositions have met within me, and, as my husband is absent, make haste, for he will soon be back."

Bahloul replied: "Oh, my mistress, my loins hurt me

↑Rabelais says on the subject of women who, against the laws of nature, go on receiving the embraces of men after having conceived: "And if anybody should blame them for allowing men to explore them when full, considering that beasts in the like case never endure the male to enter, they will say that those are beasts; but they are women, making use of their right of superfetation."